Famous opera masterpieces | Featuring many great opera singers

Candide Overture – Leonard BernsteinLeonard Bernstein

Candide Overture – Leonard Bernstein

This is the Overture from the opera Candide by Leonard Bernstein—born in 1918, an American composer, conductor, and pianist.

Candide is based on the adventure novel by the 18th-century French thinker Voltaire, which sharply criticizes society.

Leonard Bernstein undertook the arduous task of adapting this novel into an opera.

Intermezzo from the opera Cavalleria Rusticana (Mascagni)Pietro Mascagni

Intermezzo from the opera Cavalleria Rusticana (Mascagni)

This is the Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana, a work by Pietro Mascagni, an Italian opera composer and conductor born in 1863.

The opera’s title means “Rustic Chivalry,” and its plot involves a love triangle that leads to a duel and murder.

The Intermezzo is especially famous and is often performed on its own.

Scene of frenzyJōn Sazārando: Uta

Donizetti: Mad Scene from the opera Lucia di Lammermoor

This is a piece from the opera Lucia di Lammermoor, which portrays the tragic love of Lucia, a young woman whose brother’s scheme prevents her from marrying the man she loves.

The aria is sung in the scene where Lucia, driven mad after a complete falling-out with her lover Edgardo, stabs the husband her brother forced upon her.

Yet the text she sings is full of dreamlike imagery, which powerfully heightens the sense of terror.

Composed in an era when vocal virtuosity was prized, the piece demands exceptionally high technical skill—such as sustaining rapid, very high notes—making it not only terrifyingly expressive but also a captivating masterpiece.

Opera Orfeo ed Euridice (by Gluck)Furaiburuku Barokku Kangen Gakudan

Gluck – Opera «Orfeo ed Euridice» Wq.30 | René Jacobs Freiburger Barockorchester

Because Orpheus’s beloved wife, Eurydice, dies after being bitten by a venomous snake, Orpheus goes to plead with the king of the underworld to return her.

She is granted back on the condition that he must not look back at her until they reach the surface, but he turns to look at her along the way, and she is taken back to the underworld.

Along with this story, it is an elegant opera composed of delicate melodies.

Song of GemsRosu Anheresu: uta

Renée Fleming – Jewel Song – Faust

This is a piece sung in the opera Faust.

Marguerite, a young woman who has received jewels from Faust—who has regained his youth through the devil’s power—gazes at her reflection in the mirror, entranced.

She adorns herself with the remaining jewels from the casket, one by one, realizes her own beauty, gains confidence, and feels the stirrings of love.

Opera La Traviata (Giuseppe Verdi)Tōkyō Firuhāmonī Kōkyō Gakudan

Tokyo Phil members talk about opera! No. 2

La Traviata, counted among the masterpieces of opera for its dramatic power and exceptionally high number of performances, nevertheless suffered a major failure at its premiere at Venice’s La Fenice in March 1853 and went unappreciated for a time.

The soprano singing the role of Violetta was considered overly stout and therefore comical, and the subject matter—centered on a courtesan—was still difficult for Italian audiences to accept.

The recognition of this superb opera had to await a more suitable time.

The Champagne SongEzio Pinza

Mozart “Don Giovanni” “Champagne Aria” Pinza

From Mozart’s Don Giovanni, the Act I aria of Don Giovanni.

As its title suggests, it erupts with torrential energy like champagne bursting from a bottle, surging forward and then rushing past.

It’s a piece that conveys Don Giovanni’s brutality while still exuding a wild allure.

Pourquoi me reveiller / O spring breeze, why do you awaken me? (O spring breeze, why do you awaken me?)Jonas Kaufmann/yonasu·kaufuman: song

Werther: “Pourquoi me réveiller” (Jonas Kaufmann)

This is one of the arias from the opera Werther (also rendered as Wether), which is based on the novel The Sorrows of Young Werther.

In it, Werther sings of his feelings for Charlotte, who is already engaged to be married, expressing a heartrending, maddening unrequited love.

Mozart – The Marriage of Figaro Overture (K.492) – Wiener Symphoniker – Fabio Luisi (HD)Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Mozart – The Marriage of Figaro Overture (K.492) – Wiener Symphoniker – Fabio Luisi (HD)

Born in 1756, the Australian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s work, the opera The Marriage of Figaro, from which this is the Overture.

The Marriage of Figaro is one of the most famous and beloved operas of all time.

The overture is also frequently performed on its own.

Comic opera The Elixir of Love (by Gaetano Donizetti)Uīn Kokuritsu Kagekijō Kangen Gakudan

The Sound Of…L’Elisir D’Amore

It’s an opera that is romantic and tinged with melancholy, with an engaging story centered on the push and pull of love.

Above all, when Adina hears that Nemorino has become a soldier to raise money to buy a love potion, and he sees her eyes fill with tears, he sings the aria “Una furtiva lagrima,” believing in her love—the poignantly beautiful melody sends a shiver through the heart.